Editorial: It’s time for Illinois to ratify Equal Rights Amendment

He can’t always get what he wants, but Rolling Stones singer Mick Jagger hopes Illinois gets what it needs.

Ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment.

The rock superstar added his name to the growing list of people who believe it’s past time for the state to approve the amendment most states signed off on more than four decades ago.

“Please vote yes on the Equal Rights Amendment. I have three daughters who are U.S. citizens and they should all deserve rights under the Constitution of the United States,” Jagger said in a letter to Illinois lawmakers.

It’s hard to imagine this is still an issue in 2018, but it is.

The majority of states ratified the Equal Rights Amendment within the 7-year deadline set by Congress on its passage in 1972.

There were enough stragglers, though, to prompt Congress to extend the deadline to 1982.

Even then, it gained little traction. Supporters of the amendment believe it lost momentum because of the Stop ERA campaign by conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly.

Whatever the reason, it wasn’t until 2017 that Nevada became the 36th state to ratify the amendment. Thirty-eight states must ratify the amendment to put it on the books.

Illinois is poised to become state No. 37, with the Senate approving ratification this month by a 43-12 vote. In the House, though, there are mixed signals about the chances for passage.

We’re scratching our head as to why.

Designed to give women constitutional protections to equal treatment, the amendment actually is a relic from the 1920s — first introduced in Congress in 1923, on the heels of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote.

The original document, known as the Lucretia Mott Amendment, was simple enough: “Men and women shall have equal rights throughout the United States and every place subject to its jurisdiction.”

Sometimes the simplest things are the most complicated, though, and what followed were years and years of debate about the need for such an amendment. Although it was brought before Congress at almost every session between then and 1970, its destination usually was some committee where it gathered dust.

Strides have been made in those decades since to provide for the equal treatment of women — the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited discrimination based not only on race, religion and origin but also on gender.

Yet there always seemed to be just enough exceptions to the rules that women had the same rights as men in theory only. The Equal Pay Act of 1963, for example, established that women should receive the same amount of pay as a man for the same job — but it exempted a wide range of professions.

The rise of the women’s movement and the National Organization for Women in the late 1960s started putting some muscle behind the political power of women and helped secure federal approval for the amendment in 1972.

But there also was strong anti-amendment sentiment, with opponents saying passage would allow such things as unisex bathrooms, women losing custody of their children in divorce cases and the drafting of young women into the armed forces.

That played a strong part in the proposal failing to get the required state support — five states even rescinded ratification before the deadline.

Others, including some Republicans in Illinois, consider it a thinly veiled attempt by Democrats to court women voters.

The excuses seem to be doing a lot of reading between the lines of a rather straight-forward amendment: “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex,” the amendment reads.